This invention relates to telecommunication and—in an important example—to the provision of enhanced telecommunication services such as conference calls.
Telephone systems and services are ubiquitous and are used for both residential and business purposes. The services and features provided by telephony systems have developed from simple person-to-person calls to conference calls where many parties are connected together at a time. There exist of course a wide variety of telephony devices for end users, including fixed line handsets, mobile/cellular handsets, personal digital assistants or other mobile computing devices that are mobile/cellular enabled and Internet Protocol (IP) telephones.
A variety of methods and systems have been proposed for managing telephone call set-up and in-call functions. Some of these are specific to network types (for example Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), mobile/cellular or Voice over IP (VoIP); others apply to a range of networks. Business users typically require a range of call set-up and in-call functions services, which are typically provided by a Private Automatic Branch Exchange (PABX). Service providers may offer enhanced services such as automated dial-in or operator-assisted conference calls. It has further been proposed (see for example WO 2005/101857) to provide enhanced telecommunication services to end users, which are media transport network independent. A service that allows users to remotely view and manage the participants of a call, has significant appeal in terms of security, visibility and control.
A significant percentage of all of the people who participate in conference calls, for example, have wireless devices. Such devices may have restricted bandwidth connections or restricted processing capacity and it has hitherto proved difficult to provide—effectively and efficiently—a system that allows such users to remotely view and manage the participants of a call.